Highlight of Comic Con was selling one of my books to Richard Pini who helped write the books that I used to learn to read. I could give a shit about Dick and Jane but I wanted to find out why the pretty lady was hurting the hot guy in the cage and to do that, I had to know what the words meant.

Got home from San Diego and washed my clothes. Now I’m off to Baltimore Maryland for Otakon. I’ll be at table C05 in Artist Alley. It’s on the corner of Avenue C and 100 Street in Hall E.

I’ll have Devil’s Panties book 5 and Men in Kilts playing cards (PG-13 thanks to a LOT of Photoshop) and Devil and Angel Girl pins and zombie shirts and um.. and other playing cards and… and… and no ponies.

Boomer Goodheart asks:
“I would like to order a custom octo. How much, and how do I do it?”

Unfortunately I have pre-booked the lady’s commissions till at least the end of the year. In watching her work I noticed that she seldom gets a chance to experiment with her art, her tools or her characters. In the run-up to the heaviest part of the convention season she’s been using the usual Ustream time to make sure that the sacred space does not go empty during her absence. In the near future I hope the Ustreams become a more open ended activity where she can simply play without restrictions or expectations.

PurpleRanger asks:
“So, are you the one posting new strips this week?”

A soulless, unfeeling automaton is currently flinging pre-conjealed globules of joy onto the site. It and I are only remotely related.

James Hull asks:
“is she really as neurotic as she portays herself?”

*parry*

Aili asks:
“Is Jennie eating her vegetables?”

She has planted a garden. She has planted several gardens. They threaten the order of things with their incessant growing.

There is talk of revolt.

Jennie Breeden Asks:
“Um… What are you working on?”

My primary work streams can be summed up as follows:

– New hosting
Dreamhost has been a whole bunch of OK, however I think the site could use both extra power and more redundancy. My background in the hosting industry instinctually highlights the path NOT to take: A server on A rack in A datacenter. I’ve swapped out enough allegedly ECC RAM modules and supposedly RAIDs to know not to lead my dearest down Obvious Trap Lane.

An earlier experiment with TEH CLOUDS showed two things I already knew. That it was possible to host a webcomic on a cloud service and that I can’t code worth a crap.

So rather than re-implementing Comicpress in Python on App Engine(not to deride folks who have), I decided to take what already works and move it to Amazon Web Services.

More on that soon.

– Converting all book fulfillment to Amazon
Jennie spends way too much time doing things that don’t involve making people laugh. Packing, shipping, filling every crevice of our three story townhome with books, haggling at the post office… I don’t think this is her lot. Exposing her works to a bigger audience and allowing her more time to work on her comics is hardly an unideal situation.

Mari Huffman demands:
“Speak! Speak, good sir!”

Were I a vampire, and would what lay between us be a threshold, and would this be an invitation(it is), I would be grimly grinning(I am).